


But At Least The War Is Over

by ktfics



Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing
Genre: Angst, M/M, Post-New Dangan Ronpa V3, Virtual Reality, vr au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-29
Updated: 2019-09-29
Packaged: 2020-11-01 08:16:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 930
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20811950
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ktfics/pseuds/ktfics
Summary: Kaito doesn’t talk much nowadays, but he supposes it doesn’t quite matter, with all the good talking did him in-game.





	But At Least The War Is Over

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from the song In Our Bedroom After The War by Stars, follow me on tumblr @dykeenvy if you wanna talk oumota!

The windows in the hospital are small.

Kaito’s never exactly taken the time to measure them, but he’s spent enough time staring out them to know that they’re not nearly big enough. Sometimes, he imagines the window panes shattering, the glass expanding, widening their worldview but turning them into bugs trapped by a cup in the process. Sometimes, he imagines opening the windows and all of the oxygen getting sucked out of the room, their bodies imploding like burnt-out stars, stuck in their own skin for all eternity.

The stars look pretty tonight, Kaito thinks.

He traces the constellations with his eyes, leaning forward to get a better view out of that too-small window. The window in the group therapy room is one of the worst, small like all the others and too high up on top of that, the sky too far away, too unreachable. If he squints his eyes, the crescent moon almost becomes a wink amongst all that inky black, the stars turned into freckles, the nighttime making a mockery of him. But then again, what else is new?

He finds Polaris in the night sky easily, and from there it’s not hard to map out the rest of the star chart that was implanted into his brain. Ursa Major and Minor, Hercules, Cassiopeia, Gemini, Draco; he finds their constellations and then lists out the stars within them, where they’re at in their life cycle, their apparent magnitude, goes through facts until the crescent moon stops its winking and the world solidifies, becomes something real, real because the stars here are normal and because he was told it was real, because something has to be real and even if the people around him aren’t, at least he has the sky and all its empty promises-

“Psst, Momota-chan-” Kokichi tugs on the neck of Kaito’s T-shirt until he’s forced to look down into the other boy’s porcelain doll eyes. He’s got his head in Kaito’s lap, his feet precariously perched on another chair he’d dragged over next to them, and Kaito would complain about the position if he didn’t know Ouma needed the contact in order to feel anything at all, if he himself wasn’t comforted by the reminder that Ouma was whole and not an ooze on the ground.

Kaito clears his throat once, twice. He doesn’t talk much nowadays, but he supposes it doesn’t quite matter, with all the good talking did him in-game. “What is it?” he asks, his voice sounding a bit dumb, a bit too slow, even to his own ears.

Kokichi just cocks his head towards their therapist, sitting in the center of the room surrounded by ghosts and looking at him with concern in her eyes. “Momota-kun,” she says, her voice finally piercing through the vacuum that’s made its home in Kaito’s head, “I asked you a question.”

Kaito shifts in his seat, his fingers idly running through Kokichi’s hair as he ignores the stares he’s getting from everyone else. “Can you repeat it?” he asks. The therapist merely sighs, as if she thinks she’s not getting paid enough to be here, and Kaito can’t help but sympathize with that sentiment.

“We’re discussing the trauma you may have experienced due to believing you had died,” she says, her words carefully enunciated, “Would you care to contribute?”

Kaito shrugs, his eyes flickering back to that too-high window as he thinks about fake stars and fake rockets and a smiling moon making a mockery out of him, nothing quite right but at least- at least he was done. At least he could die foolishly believing he had done his best.

“Dying was the best part of my life,” he says simply, voice still a little hoarse, “I’ve got nothin’ to contribute.” 

And for a moment, his mouth doesn’t feel quite right, his teeth crooked and his tongue heavy, but he knows that there’s nothing wrong with his body nowadays and it’s just the confession, the sound of it out loud, that doesn’t sit quite right with him even as he knows it to be true.

Kaito dimly realizes that he doesn’t even remember the last time he thought about the future. Funny, isn’t it? They tried to turn him into someone obsessed with possibility and this is what came out the other side.

He’s ruined himself.

The therapist continues to try to talk to him, but it’s Ouma that recaptures his attention with a low whisper, Ouma who’s spent the last few weeks talking at him in some desperate attempt to recreate the reactions he used to be able to draw out of Kaito, his efforts sometimes successful, mostly not. Kaito doesn’t know how he hasn’t bored him yet.

“You know you’re alive, right, Momota-chan?” Ouma asks, sounding like it’s the second or third time he’s had to repeat his question.

“Sure I do,” Kaito murmurs, shrugging again as he looks out at all those stars and everything he’s never going to get to do, the universe a vast void of mostly nothing at all with the rest of his life stretching out into it. He pauses as Ouma’s small hand brushes against his cheek, trying to get him to focus. “Terrible, isn’t it?” he finally says, not sure what Ouma wants from him but positive that that isn’t it. He never did like the truth much.

And Ouma just gazes up at him, eyes a little sad, a little resigned, but it turns out even he can’t spin a lie good enough to cover up the great failure that was their lives.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading, comments and kudos are appreciated!


End file.
